


Heavenly Bodies

by NekoAisu



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Carbuncle Lore Hours, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 14:45:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20391418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoAisu/pseuds/NekoAisu
Summary: Even wrapped in the all-encompassing black that is the color of House Caelum, Noctis’s heart burns starbright. Carbuncle can see his brilliance even behind their eyelids.





	Heavenly Bodies

**Author's Note:**

> My piece for Ever At Your Side zine! Check it out at https://twitter.com/atyoursidezine !

Carbuncle hates their job. They’ve existed for centuries in the periphery of mortal realities, shaping dreams and watching for the winking of a newborn star in the hearts of the children who stare back at them with too-sharp eyes, and it’s only now that they begin to realize the folly of the Astrals’ chosen solution. Noctis smiles at them, chest pulsing in time with his uneven, fluttering heartbeat, and they hate so acutely it feels like Ifrit’s fire. They hate the prophecy, the Astrals whose problems it was machinated to solve, and how Noctis doesn’t even yet _ know. _

_ (Can’t _ know, really. Carbuncle has seen enough child sacrifices, those choice many who are raised to throw themselves onto swords as if it’s an _ honor, _that they refuse to allow Noctis that twisted illusion no matter the pain it will cause him.)

Noctis is everything Carbuncle loves in children─thoughtlessly kind even as he’s selfish, curious even when it causes him pain─and they snuffle at his palm to chase traces of aether and emotions even as he laughs above them. They’d passed him by at first because he’d not had the barest hint of a glow; there was no trace of the usual gauzy, flickering connection to the Light of the Crystal that Lucis Caelums are born with. 

But then Noctis had caught their gaze and held it, smiling tentatively as if unsure of whether or not Carbuncle meant to be seen by his eyes.

Carbuncle knew, unerringly, that this is _ wrong _ . It’s their job to just look and appraise. Their travelling through dreams and the manipulation of the sights and sounds therein is a skill given to _ further _their ability to fulfill their role, not detract from it the way they’ve begun to do. 

When they reach out it’s with their spirit, a brush of soothing energy that suffuses the edges and prismatic angles of Noctis’s own. They watch as he laughs at the licks to his hands, as he trundles around to grab a book Carbuncle knows is some newer, further diluted version of the Cosmogony they’d long since grown tired of, and as he grows from child to man in the span of a moment. 

It feels like they’ve blinked and Noctis is an adult. Well, as “adult” as a mortal, eighteen year old boy can get. Carbuncle smiles sadly when Noctis, _ their _ Noctis, pours the light from his heart into potions for his people as if cutting out pieces from himself to harbor and harness the magic of his lineage is the least he can do. He’s selfless like long-dead Saints whose compassion bled them dry in the streets. He’s _ too _ selfless even without the prophecy breathing down his neck and writing in blood how many days, hours, minutes until Insomnia falls. 

Noctis sleeps a lot. He has since his injury (the one Carbuncle wants to rage over, to breathe absolute _ carnage _ down upon Niflheim for) and it pains them to see. Noctis is incredible, truly, and it shows in how he forgoes his own needs wants in favor of caring for others. He sleeps between meetings and in the car when Ignis shuttles him from one side of the city to another, catching a maximum of six hours at his apartment on a _ good _day. He smears concealer under his eyes for public appearances with a practice-steady hand in hopes his eye bags won’t show through. His dedication is horrifying.

Carbuncle cannot stand to see him plagued by terrors during some of the only rest he can find. They soothe the crease between Noctis’s brows with the flick of their tail and the twitch of one oversized ear, listening for the echoes of gunfire and the tang of blood filling their mouth and coating their tongue until they fade from Noctis’s mind. They lay beside him on his apartment’s dreadfully uncomfortable designer couch and watch his heart beat until they’re sure Noctis will sleep soundly.

Though he’d been born frail in his connection to the hunk of Eos’s love that is the Crystal, Noctis had not stayed as such. Carbuncle can see the blossoming of his power behind their eyelids, gossamer petals unfurling from their place cradling his heart whenever he reaches out to give yet more of himself, and the star-bright brilliance of his love shines through the deathly true-black of Lucis Caelum house colors.

Had he not been so cursed blessed, Carbuncle would dare hope that their wonderful Noctis will refuse to be snuffed out. 

(But he is bound by the light of the Crystal so tightly there’s naught else to do but stay within its confines.)

They hope, against all odds, that Noctis will renounce the prophecy even as he grows into it the way all pawns do. They hope and they pray to some power higher than even Eos herself that Noctis will be spared. They do not get their wish.

Sometimes, Carbuncle wishes Regis hadn’t been so soft hearted a father. It’s a more common feeling, now that Noctis’s fate to be felled by his father’s sword marches ever closer. They understand why he sheltered his son, though, and thank him for it even as Noctis curses and spits what-ifs into their fur as if they can absorb the vitriol that drips from his words. 

(They’re a wretched pair, Regis and Carbuncle, in all their love for this ridiculous, fishing-crazed Child of Light. They’d die for him, man and god alike, and Carbuncle can see how Noctis’s gods-given Light shackles his friends to him with that same promise of sacrifice.)

It’s no surprise when Noctis proves to have more than just the two of them in his corner. He’s a star in his own right, brilliant in mind same as he is magnetic, and what had been one friend turns to three, five, twelve and counting until Noctis’s heart is filled to bursting. When he tethers his magic to that of his closest friends, Carbuncle can see in them the prophecy. 

Ignis burns in shades of indigo like one of Ifrit’s fireborn and there are ley lines etched into his soul much like Noctis’s. He’d wear the Ring, was _ made _ to, and Carbuncle cannot stand it. The Shield-to-be is much the same, but wreathed in red and dripping with spectral armor. If Carbuncle closes their eyes and allows themself to _ feel, _there’s a near-overwhelming energy that pulses outward in time to his heart. He refuses to die for aught else than his king.

Then, there’s Prompto. Of all the friends, acquaintances, and moderately-tolerable personages Noctis has ever met, Prompto is the strangest. When Carbuncle reaches out, strums their fingers across the branching connection he shares with Noctis, it quivers with _ sound. _ Prompto is not his own cosmic entity, not his own color, but when he smiles it’s more than worth it to see how _ Noctis _lights up at the expression. Carbuncle slips into his dreams one night just to see how one person can be so remarkably unremarkable and gains answers in the form of distorted screeching and glowing gold eyes. 

(And it’s unfair. To him, surely, but more so to Noctis. For a boy whose entire existence has been predetermined, the king-to-be has managed to find himself incredible company. Carbuncle snaps and growls at the Accursed, throws his memory out of Prompto’s head same as they do the last remnants of Scourge sitting dormant in his veins. If this boy is a friend of their Noctis, he would be Carbuncle’s friend as well.)

But there is no time to rage when the Star is dying. There is no banner left to rally under once the nights grow long and longer still, Noctis in a place they cannot reach despite trying and begging and _ praying _that Eos would take pity on them and allow them the barest glimmer of a hint that Noctis may still make it back to them. Carbuncle visits Ignis in the night just long enough to chase away memories of seizing muscle and the smell of burning. 

They try to slip into Gladiolus’s nightmares to soothe him, but there’s so many of them it’s hard to keep up. There are visions of Noctis and Lunafreya on the altar, both of them long having since bled out and become cold _ (so terribly cold) _ same as there are lightning-quick fragments of a memory that makes his face throb same as it does his heart.

Carbuncle wishes they had longer arms, a broader reach, something that could let them breathe solace into the vacuum chamber that is the eternal Night. Everyone is lonely and _ tired. _

And they shouldn’t be.

The inhabitants of the Star should be able to put faith in a king, in _ Noctis, _but the Crystal keeps him for ten long years just to watch the world crumble around it. Noctis is too compassionate and too selfless to think cleaving himself in two is a price too steep to pay to solve problems that are not truly his to shoulder.

When he marches towards Insomnia with his heart burning brighter than a new sun, Carbuncle hopes it won’t go out. _ Can’t _ go out. They press their magic into his mind, checking for damage Bahamut’s doctrine doubtless caused, and find nothing but miles of deep ocean water and chest pains. They’d tried to soothe the Accursed, once. It was too similar a feeling to dying, of having that which you need torn away from seam to seam, and Carbuncle cannot stand it. 

Noctis _ knows, _now, and his knowledge of the prophecy and all it entails forges his Light into a blade; one from which the aether in the space Between shies away from when he reaches for his father’s sword. Ardyn taunts with his blackened tongue and bloodied hands like he truly needs to, unable to see the empyreal shining of Noctis’s kindness. The Accursed looks past him, past Prompto whose mind is always making a valiant attempt at going a mile a minute, and smiles at Carbuncle with a mixture of pity and relief. He doesn’t want Noctis to know of the terrible pain that is becoming a martyr (but it still needs to be done). He infects Noctis’s companions (his friends, his family, his everything) with his sickness just to get them out of the way of his final chance at eternal rest. The monster inside of him roars, snapping and foaming at the mouth in fury at the thought of death─and yet the Accursed is resigned to it.

Carbuncle is a young god. They cannot see the past before their creation, but they know the stories of a healer king brought low by his gods-given gift. They know Noctis has seen what they were never able to and that the putrid sickness of the Scourge is visible to his eyes same as it has always been to theirs. 

The Crystal’s gift still flickers, never truly smothered, and Ardyn forces his armiger to rip through the gossamer dimensions between his realm and the present. Noctis faces him with fire and lightning, gods called to do his bidding as if momentary appearances are payment enough for his life, until he lands the final blow.

Carbuncle can see the relief in his aura same as they do his soft exhale, magic still sputtering along the ground when he rises to complete the prophecy. Noctis does not smile, does not cry, does not do anything Carbuncle has come to expect from him over the years. All the Chosen King can see are the worn corners of hollowed out spaces made for magic same as the centuries-old scorch marks that come from carrying a star in your rib cage. Noctis feels his chest ache under the burden of his birthright and wonders how Ardyn shouldered his for so many millenia. 

Carbuncle hates their job, yes, but they are grateful for how it allowed them to know Noctis. They hate the prophecy, the Star that warranted its creation, and the Astrals that refuse to use their divine right to reverse their mistakes. 

But they do not hate Noctis. 

They cannot soothe the sharp, dizzying blows of aetheric weapons rending the very fabric of Noctis’s soul. Each of the Lucii take from him, cleaving his Light apart like it’s a commodity they can help themselves to, and the reverence Noctis had shown the throne is bitter in Carbuncle’s throat as they chirp and murmur notions made of solace into his mind. When Regis stands before them, mournful even with filigree and silver obscuring his face, sword raised only because Noctis had asked him to and not because of the gods-ordained prophecy, there is nothing else Carbuncle can do but dull swells of emotion as they appear. They want to escort him to a dream where he is not the King of Light in all his preordained glory, but there is no force on the entirety of the Star that could distract from the inexorable agony of being crucified for the sake of a new Dawn.

They cannot heal him the way the line of Lucis is wont to do, revival not even the most remote of possibilities when the air shimmers with shapes and symbols not unlike a moving picture show so long after the initial invocation. Carbuncle waits and watches and prays, eyes turned to the heavens, and does not move even as the sun rises. They hope against all hope his star-bright heart will stutter back to life, but the rays keep dimming until Carbuncle can see nothing but a void of ash where they’d once been blinded.

Carbuncle curls around what is left of their dear Noctis and weeps. They do not leave his side. 

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos, comments, and concrit are all more than welcome!!
> 
> Yell with me on:  
tumblr ─ @kiriami  
twitter ─ @FlamingAceKiri


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